UN, April 11. /TASS/. The UN Security Council session on Venezuela, which convened at the US initiative on Wednesday, is a yet another episode of the ongoing onslaught on Caracas, Russia’s UN envoy Vasily Nebenzya said.
"What is going on in the Security Council today is regretfully a yet another episode of the frontal attack on the Caracas government and ordinary Venezuelans," he said.
He went on to say that those who call themselves friends of Venezuela have been trying to challenge the legitimacy of the country's official diplomatic missions to international organizations.
"Moreover, those ‘friends’ have been seeking to replace Venezuela’s official envoys and helping to seize diplomatic property," Nebenzya said.
"The basic principles of the UN Charter are being violated in a most outrageous way, important norms of the international law are being trampled upon in plain sight," the Russian diplomat continued. "Possibly, the ‘rule-based international order,’ which is now being actively promoted by our Western colleagues, envisages this kind of banditry, but the international law definitely does not."
Venezuela crisis
On January 23, Juan Guaido, Venezuelan opposition leader and parliament speaker, whose appointment to that position had been cancelled by the country’s Supreme Court, declared himself interim president at a rally in the country’s capital of Caracas.
Several countries, including the United States, Lima Group members (excluding Mexico), Australia, Albania, Georgia and Israel, as well as the Organization of American States, recognized him. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in turn, blasted the move as a coup staged by Washington and said he was severing diplomatic ties with the US. On February 4, most of the European Union member states recognized Guaido as Venezuela’s interim president
In contrast, Russia, Belarus, Bolivia, Iran, Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Syria and Turkey voiced support for Maduro, while China called for resolving all differences peacefully and warned against foreign interference.